Orange County Biographies
HENRY STERLING PANKEY
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm
a farmer of the Los Bolsa tract in Orange County, was born in Tippah County,
Mississippi, in 1852, and reared principally in Tennessee. His parents, Henry
and Zilpah (Daniels) Pankey, were natives of South Carolina. The father died
when his son Henry was only a year old, and the mother married Marion Clark four
years later. Being ill-treated by his stepfather, Henry left him to live with
William Burns, of Texas. Six months' schooling was all that Mr. Pankey ever
received. During the war he suffered many privations and undertook many
disagreeable risks. He had to go twelve miles to mill, sitting upon his sack of
corn to keep the soldiers from taking it. In March, 1869, he started across the
plains for California with an ox team and a drove of cattle, and had to do a
great part of the traveling at night. He carried water in pint bottles. From
Fort Yuma onward he had but 50 cents in money upon which to travel. At Azusa he
worked six months in payment for a horse, and subsequently worked for a man
named Marion Taylor.
At this point it may be interesting to relate what was probably the most
remarkable incident in Mr. Pankey's life. He drove an ox team across the plains
for his stepfather, who had so abused him. The last time he saw his mother was
at Pachee Pass. She and her husband went to San Diego County and remained there
five months, and he went afterward to Downey, where he died. Henry's mother, now
the second time a widow, had four children and was in destitute circumstances.
She advertised for her son, who had left them on the plains, not knowing, of
course, that he was at Azusa, and he did not know where she was. July 4 he went
to a celebration at Downey, and happened to notice a saddle and a horse which he
recognized as belonging to Clark. This he raced up, and by it found where his
mother was, and was able thus to save her from the destitute circumstances into
which she had been thrown.
Mr. Pankey worked by the day, and by so doing earned sufficient to pay
for a small piece of land near Downey, and in 1871 came to Orange County. After
residing one year at Orange, he kept cattle for a year in Laguna canon, and from
there he went to Trabuca ca�on, where he was the first settler and where he
entered the business of bee-keeping. Afterward he followed farming two years at
Newport, and then kept bees again at Temescal some two years, when he moved back
to Newport and followed agriculture there three years. Then he came to New Hope
district and bought twenty acres of land; but this he sold a year afterward and
bought eighty acres on the Los Bolsa tract, where he now lives. Out of a barren
waste he has made a fine farm, and where the wild cactus once stood roses now
bloom. His beautiful residence is a monument of his enterprise. In his business
as a general farmer he is very successful, having built himself up from the
lowest financial round of the ladder to his present enviable position. Socially
he is a member of the I. O. O. F., and of the Reorganized Church of the
Latter-day Saints.
In 1872 he married Nancy E. Damron, a native of Kaufman County, Texas.
He was a resident of California, and his children are: Jeff. Vernon, who was
killed at thirteen years of age; Maggie Lee, Dora Jennie, Zilpah Pearl, John
Henry and Edgar.
SOURCE: An Illustrated History of Southern California: Embracing the Counties
of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower
California� Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890. p.- 863-864